Miami hip-hop act ArtOfficial keeps it real

ArtOfficial will play Friday night at Bardot in Miami. (ArtOfficial/Courtesy )

June 8, 2012|by Maria Murriel, Sun Sentinel

In the summer of 2006, Keith Cooper walked into Felt Billiards in Miami Beach, armed with a saxophone and ready to play. He got on stage only to find himself among strangers.

He and three other musicians had agreed to perform with keyboardist Danny Perez, whose bandmates had abandoned him before the show. Cooper introduced himself to the group, and they began to play to about 15 of their friends.

"[Perez] was calling him by the wrong name," recalls emcee Juan Pedraza, 29, a.k.a. Logics. "It's hard to hear up on stage, and none of us had ever met [Cooper] before. So [Perez] was introducing him as the wrong person."

Despite the confusion, the group felt a connection on stage. But soon after that show, Cooper split to India. "He told us, 'Hey, this was cool. I'll call you when I get back,' " Pedraza says. "Three months later, he comes back and he called us."

Today, these former strangers – along with bassist Ralf Valencia and emcee Danny "Newsense" Villamil, both of whom were with them onstage at that Felt gig – are better known as ArtOfficial, a Miami-based hip-hop collective that has released two albums, including last year's "Vitamins and Minerals," and played more shows than they can count.

These have hardly been anonymous, hole-in-the-wall shows, either: In 2009, the band won the Florida Grammy Showcase, earning $25,000 and studio time in the process. This year, the quintet played the inaugural Virginia Key Grassroots Festival, on a bill that also included Fishbone and Chaka Khan, and Little Havana's Carnaval on the Mile, in addition to shows at Bayfront Park and Bardot nightclub.

Tonight, the band will return to Bardot for a show that originally was to include a guest DJ spot by the Roots drummer Questlove, who canceled this week due to a reported scheduling conflict.

Questlove's appearance would have been fitting, because like the Roots, ArtOfficial ranks among those rare hip-hop acts whose members play musical instruments instead of rapping over pre-recorded tracks. Valencia, 27, calls the band's music "organic hip-hop."

ArtOfficial also boasts strong Latin roots, which is evident in songs such as "AO Cadence" and "Too Nasty," though no one will confuse the band's music with that of the late salsa queen Celia Cruz. The emcee's rhymes, meanwhile, are more poetic than those of generic rappers such as Wacka Flocka.

In ArtOfficial's "Big City Bight Lights," Pedraza raps, "I'm from the land of the sun/Home of a million and one/Cultures that drum to different rhythms/But we share the same tongue," as the band's sax-heavy funk underscores his staccato rapping.

On the "Vitamins and Minerals" single "Bags Packed," Pedraza and Villamil tell the story of ArtOfficial's life on the road. Its accompanying video, which the band says it will release later this month, includes footage from shows and trips as far back as 2008. It's a celebration of how far these once-anonymous musicians have come.

"The video was kind of what we've done in the past, what we're doing now, and what we hope to be doing in the future," Pedraza says. We're [expletive] compared to U2, but we're a level above 'small local band.' "